


i was a fire

by imincharge



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Logan (2017), Maybe a little angst, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Post Season 4, The Last of Us AU, and she has to take care of a kid that won't have a future, clarke is alone she lost everybody she misses lexa, i needed to do something, it could also be a, look you have Clarke with a little girl, probably angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-07 01:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11612673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imincharge/pseuds/imincharge
Summary: Maddie is tired of just surviving. When she finds a map promising that life could be more, she wants to follow it. And Clarke... Clarke thinks some things are better buried in the past.AKA. Logan AU / The Last of Us AU





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. It's a Clexa fic. I don't want to say much about what is going to happen, but. Things happen.  
> 2\. It started as a Logan AU, but it's also canon because both stories are post-apocalyptic so it's not like you have to change much.

_"Loving you was breathing_

_but the breath disappearing_

_before it filled my lungs"_

**when it goes to soon - rupi kaur**

 

It's an afternoon after a night of rain and the forest is silent. Clarke can hear the last drops falling from the trees in the distance while she's laying on the hood of the rover with eyes closed, enjoying the peace. Sometimes she hears birds singing, those strange radioactive birds that became normal for her, and there are also her favorite moments, when the rustling of leaves announces the wind is coming, just before she feels the fresh air on her skin. 

Only when the silence becomes too silent, Clarke opens her eyes, her brain following just one second later and she sits so fast the drawing on her lap falls to the ground.

"Shit," she murmurs, jumping to the ground and picking it up again. Clarke cleans it and folds the yellow paper carefully, but still not as careful as the old paper demands because her mind is already elsewhere. 

On the silence. 

On the trees. 

"Maddie?" she calls.

The silence now has a darkness in it, expanding between the trees as far as she can see, without any sign of the young girl. 

Clarke takes her rifle and looks at the map opened on the hood, it's handmade and the drawing stops suddenly. She got distracted by memories she was supposed to avoid. Now it lays there, incomplete, and she doesn't have time for it.

"Maddie?" she calls again, already circling the spot around the car where they are camping. "Where are you?" 

Maddie probably is playing around somewhere just distant enough to hear, but this sounds easier said than in reality. Clarke is walking into the woods, the trees surrounding her now have no foliage, they are just gray skeletons twisted over her head, and as she walks, her boots sink into the wet earth. There's no sound. Not even the drops or birds now. Clarke doesn't need to fly away like them to know what is around her: a whole lot of empty vastness. She knows it. They walked around at least a dozen times, everywhere, during the last 6 years. Every direction, there's death. It's just the two of them and some animals made of skin and bones that, just like them, are too stubborn to die.

And they are also very hungry. 

Clarke adjusts her grip on the rifle and starts searching for tracks. 

"Maddie!" she screams louder, hoping it will scare away anything that may be near, and forces herself to pay attention to the ground. 

Any untrained eye would see just black earth, cleaned by the rain, but Clarke isn't anyone. Even if it takes some times circling, she finds the points where the soil is too deep or small mounds forming a trail. Clarke is both angry and relieved that Maddie was so careless in covering her tracks after they spent days training it. Not that anyone was there to find them, but she doesn't like surprises and Clarke is happy with how things are going, she doesn't need to change that. 

The pattern leads her into a path deep into the woods until she stops at the top of a slope. 

"Maddie?" she calls again.

"Clarke?" this time the girl answers. 

If relief was what Clarke felt for finding the tracks, this was an entirely new type of invading peace. The air returned to her lungs and she more stumbled than ran her way down the slope.

"Where are you?" 

"Here," the girl says, raising her voice so Clarke can follow it. 

She finds the girl with her knees on the mud covered in dirt and still digging. The only part of her clean, miraculously, is the black beanie on her head. Suddenly they are five years back in the past, Clarke walking around the forest, sometimes for hours, just to find a 7 years old girl climbing a tree, or talking to insects on a fallen trunk. 

Clarke stops, forehead furrowed, the memory feels like a missing piece, something that she forgot that happened, and didn't remember how or when the girl stopped playing around like a kid. But here they are, and for the 13 years old Maddie that she knows, it's weird. 

"I found it," Maddie says, looking up at Clarke with a bright smile and even brighter green eyes.

"You found... what?"

"My symbol." She points to ground before her. 

Clarke realizes that beneath all the dirt there's a metal hatch. Maddie leans forward and cleans the dirt off of it until a number 8 appears. Or the symbol of infinity.

"Stay away from it," Clarke says, taking a step back. "You don't know what it is. Leave it there."

Maddie doesn't move. Instead, she pulls her sleeve to show her forearm where the same symbol was marked with ink on her skin. 

"It's the same, Clarke. I'm sure of it. This is what my mom asked me to find." Maddie stares at the hatch with resolution. 

Yes, Clarke knows the story.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl lost in the woods, she was one of the two last people alive on Earth, but she didn't know about it. 

"Excuse me, do you know where I can find it?" The girl showed the tattoo on her skin. "My mother says I'll be safe if I find it." Back then, the black beanie was still too large for her head and used to fell over her eyes. 

Clarke didn't have it in her to tell the girl that, even if it existed the place she was looking for was burned to the ground like the rest of the world, now her heritage was just a relic of a lost past. It was a miracle that the kid survived alone still searching. So Clarke offered to help. 

It was easy. Maddie was a kid, and she liked to swim when the day was hot and loved soup with eggs. Soon she forgot about it and they fell into their routine traveling around and training. Clarke never expected that one day they'd find a hatch on the ground with the damn symbol. 

"Maddie," Clarke says, firmly, in a tone that the girl knows enough to lower her head. 

"We found it, Clarke," Maddie insists, but when Clarke offers her hand, the girl takes it.

"Come on, we need to train," Clarke says, pulling her up.

"This is a little door, Clarke. We can open it." Maddie points to the ground and Clarke tries to make her stop moving so she can clean the girl, at least as much as possible. "It's stuck, but maybe we can use one of the grenades?" Maddie says.

"No. Don't even think about it." Clarke shakes her head. "You'll only touch those grenades over my dead body. There's a reason this is locked up and it'll stay like this."

"It's to keep animals away." Maddie forces a smile.

"You're not being funny, kiddo." Clarke cleans one last spot on her cheek and kisses her head. "Now let's go, you'll need to clean yourself properly and we're already late for today."

Maddie lingers, looking back. Clarke takes a deep breath and grabs her chin, making the girl look up. 

"What have I told you?"

"My duty comes first," the girl says, gravely, green eyes trained ahead.

"No, not... What." Clarke shakes her head. "I didn't tell you that."

"Well," Maddie says, "this week we read the dictionary and it said that duty, D-U-T-Y, is something you are obligated to do, even if you don't want to, and I think it explains it."

Clarke stops looking at what this little smartass is trying to do.

"Don't even try, you won't win. Actually-" Clarke smiles- "I'm thinking about extra laps today."

Maddie grunts. 

"It's unfair!"

Clarke pushes her gently forward, so they can start walking back. 

"Welcome to the world," she says, making a broad gesture to the dead trees accompanying their walk. 

Maddie crosses her arms. 

"Can at least we have stories today?"

"I think we've had enough stories for now, Maddie. We should leave them in the past, where it's supposed to be."

 

\---

 

The image of the infinity symbol on the half-buried hatch burns on the back of Clarke's mind all day. She's there with Maddie, running their usual miles, going through their fight routine and this day, as if running fast enough she could run away from her mind, they even trained throwing knives. Maddie slept as soon as her head hit her improvised pillow on the back of the car. Clarke, though, was wide awake even when her muscles protested. 

When she walks into the woods carrying an ax, she realizes that it was a lost battle since the moment she saw the hatch. She'd have to come back and see it anyway. Not because she hoped they'd find something mystical, but because it's survival and when you've been checking the same old ruins for years, you have to see what a new hatch can bring. 

It's easy to find it, even in the dark. Not for everyone, but again, Clarke isn't everyone for a long time now. She walked in dark forests for more nights than she wished. Even this one, a bit far from where they usually go, is familiar for her trained brain after just a couple of days in the area.

The hatch is just as they left earlier. Clarke wonders how this hatch could be here. She finished the last version of her map during the afternoon while Maddie took a shower, but it still doesn't make sense. They are beyond of what used to be Ice Nation territory, too up north, and not even the grounders used to come this far before praimfaya. 

She kneels on the ground where Maddie stood and lights it with her flashlight to have a better look. The infinity symbol is there, not just any symbol, the one with four little dots interrupting one of the curves.

Clarke saw it first on a skin, just before she kissed it. 

Now Clarke needs to close her eyes and sit on the ground to take a deep breath. Suddenly she feels so tired and old, as if she survived through centuries and whatever was left of her, it was just dust. But she's still here, the weight of the ax becomes heavy on her lap, telling her that she could use it to bury this place forever. It's the easiest solution, maybe even the smartest. But Clarke's life never was easy, and she doesn't even know anymore what smart is. 

So it comes back, slowly, the tiny spark of curiosity growing inside her, spreading until it's a wildfire. When Clarke opens her eyes, she has changed, but she's not a different person, she's the one she always has been, the young girl that somehow destroyed the world. And she'll probably do it again. 

Maybe, just maybe, you can't escape who you really are. 

 

\---

 

She thought the night was dark until she looked at the black hole on the ground. Now it's too late to come back, and maybe she'll find food there, that's always motivation. So, just in case, Clarke starts by throwing a flare into the hole and pointing the rifle she also brought with her to the shadows.

The flare falls illuminating the ladder until it hits the ground, surprisingly close, and as soon as it touches the floor, a machine starts to hum. Clarke grips the gun tighter, her finger ready on the trigger, but nothing is there besides the pounding sound of her heart. One moment later, slowly, lights turn on illuminating the bottom of the ladder, coming from a tunnel. 

"Great," Clarke says to herself, her voice sounds like a whisper in the night, so she repeats louder. "It's great." 

Clarke lowers her gun and breath. 

"Yes, I'm going to do that," she says, "nothing wrong here. I'll just go underground and..." She stops looking at the ladder and feeling stupid. 

If she's being honest, she really doesn't want to do this. She has a gun, and she knows how to use it, she has been training. Theoretically, she's ready. In reality, it has been years since she was anxious about the unknown. She fought and killed animals twice her size, yes, but animals are animals, even the radioactive ones. This shit down there, this is the type of thing that ended the world. 

"Okay," Clarke says, even though she hates it now, and adjusts the strap of her rifle to put it on her back and takes her handgun before climbing down. "I'm just not going to die."

Good news: She doesn't die. 

Bad news: Well... 

When she sees the shelter, she can't believe she was afraid of it. It's just a room with no doors, no windows. There's a stainless steel table at the center. One side looks like a control panel with screens and buttons, all turned off, and right across the entrance there's cabinets and lockers. Clarke goes straight to them. Maybe there's food or anything there. If this place still has energy, it can have anything.

She's wrong. They are all empty except for trash left behind. She decides to take a good look at it anyway. After all, everything is trash left behind these days. She puts the gun on the counter and folds her sleeves, then, carefully, Clarke picks up an old, yellowish cloth and brings it to the light. It's used and dirty with blood, black blood. She looks up to the cabinet. The rest of the trash are open medicine boxes, empty bottles and plastic envelopes. 

Clarke doesn't like it. 

She looks around again, looking for more details she missed at first. She's surprised to realize that the empty wall actually is covered with a map. It's a printed colorful map, and there are pins on it and scribbles made with a pen. It looks as old as... something from the time Becca was around. Not even in the Ark they had this. 

Now what really gets her attention, though, is the girl wearing a beanie standing at the entrance. Clarke feels her heart stop. 

"Maddie?" Clarke's hand goes straight to the gun, but she covers the sudden movement as if she just wanted to put the gun in her holster. "What are you doing here?" She asks casually, turning her back to the girl and throwing the cloth inside the cabinet and closing it. 

"What was it?" Maddie asks, stretching to look. 

"Trash. Old things. Nothing useful." She turns back and looks at the girl. "What are you doing here?"

"The same as you." Maddie raises her eyebrows, and suddenly Clarke wants to kick the table, but she smiles.

"Since we're both on the same page, we know there's nothing here and we can go back."

"This doesn't look like nothing." Maddie walks to the map on the wall. 

Clarke hates to admit it, but Maddie is right. So she waits as the girl figures it out. 

Maddie takes her own map, it's the old version since they still didn't have time to copy the new one Clarke made, but it's almost as good. It's one of their rules: they have the same map, detailed with everything they discovered together over the years. Where you find the deer, bird nests, water, the best places to spend the night and, more importantly, where they can meet if they ever get separated. Maddie opens her map over the table and compares it with the one on the wall. 

Clarke knows what the girl is trying to find. She feels the weight of her own map inside her jacket pocket and already reached the same conclusion Maddie is trying to reach. She sees it happening before her eyes and in a way, there's nothing she can do. She taught Maddie herself and she knows that denying the truth won't work. It never worked, at least is what she thinks most of the time.

Even if time is a strange thing.

Years ago, a girl lived in a cell because she wanted to tell everybody the truth the government tried to hide: They were all going to die. Probably. If they didn't do anything. She was going to be the first since she ended up sentenced to death. 

But they did do something. 

She survived. 

Everybody died. 

She doesn't know if the truth matters anymore. 

So she doesn't know if Maddie knowing the truth about the map is a good thing, but she doesn't know if it's a bad thing either. She just leans on the counter and watches as the girl bites her own lips and figures it out by herself. 

"The map is bigger," the girl says, looking at Clarke for confirmation.

Clarke nods. 

Maddie opens a drawer, one that Clarke didn't notice beneath the table, and finds some yellowish paper there, but no pencils. Clarke takes the one she always carries in her pocket and hands it to the girl. 

Maddie puts the new papers around her map and starts to make a rough copy of the one on the wall to complete it. But it isn't exactly what she's doing. She's just following one path until she reaches a point marked with an infinity symbol.

One that Clarke didn't notice on the bigger map. 

"Maddie-" Clarke reaches for the girl, but she doesn't know what to do. 

"It's beyond the desert," Maddie notices, too concentrated on it to see Clarke standing there. 

"Hmm... Yes." Clarke stops by her side and looks at the two maps. "And you know what isn't on that map?" She points to the space between the infinity symbol and the old grounder territory on the wall. "The desert. This means this map is from before the first big explosions, a hundred years ago."

"But it has my symbol." Maddie shows her tattoo again. 

"I know, Maddie. But the meaning of symbols changes all the time. It doesn't mean anything."

"We should go there and see, then."

Clarke shakes her head.

"Actually, I was wrong." Clarke goes to the map on the wall and points to the symbol. "It does have a meaning. Every time it appears, the world is destroyed again. We may be the only two people alive because of it, and I plan to keep it that way."

"So we have to walk in circles here until we die?" Maddie says.

Clarke opens her mouth to answer, but Maddie is faster. She points to the map on the table. 

"We came here last year, and the year before and the year before. I'm tired of this, and you don't hear me."

"Excuse me, why are we here, hm? Because you said, let's go a little more, Clarke, just let's cross this forest. And I heard you."

"Yes! And now we found this place. It's a sign, Clarke."

"Oh my god." Clarke covers her face with her hands. She hears Maddie footsteps and raises her head to find the girl trying to reach the top of the map to pull it off the wall.

"I'm going," Maddie announces. 

"Kiddo, I know it's exciting to find something new, I get that, but this is from before the radiation, you can't just simply follow anything that has the symbol." 

Maddie turns to her, looking Clarke straight in the eyes with her chin raised. 

"Yes, I can."

Clarke stares the girl down. 

"No, you can't. You clearly aren't trained enough-"

"I don't want to train. I want to live!" 

"You don't even know what you're talking about! You don't know what is not being allowed to live. To have to sacrifice yourself over and over again. This-" Clarke points to the map- "This is not living, this is dying."

"Let's see, then."

Maddie stretches again, and this time she can pull the map off the wall. Clarke crosses her arms and watches.

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Fine, I knew you didn't want anyway. You care more about her," Maddie says while she folds the map.

"What?"

"The woman in the drawing, you're waiting for her, aren't you? You try to speak with her on the radio."

"This- This is not what I'm doing, at all."

"But you still don't want to leave." 

"Because-"

Because if her mother were alive, if her friends had survived in space again, if anyone were ever to return, they'd find her here.

Clarke presses her lips shut and turns to go back to the car. 

"Because she left you like everybody else," Maddie says behind her, triumphantly and oblivious in a way that only a kid can be. 

Clarke strikes fast. One moment she's near the exit tunnel, the other she's above Maddie grabbing her by the collar and pushing the girl against the table.

"Never speak about her again," Clarke says. Maddie stares into her eyes.

"She won't come back," Maddie says, firmly.

I will kill you, is what Clarke thinks, but swallows it. Instead, she stares back at the dark green eyes in front of her. 

"You said you want to hear a story, right?" Clarke speaks, her voice is icy. Maddie's eyes fall to Clarke's hand pushing on her chest, but Clarke doesn't move away. "I'll tell you a story, kiddo. Once upon a time," she says, punctuating each word, "there was a Princess and a Commander. The Princess thought she knew everything about everything, she could see who was wrong and who was right, and she was sure the Commander was wrong. So one day, the Princess and the Commander meet and they- The Princess convinces the Commander to change, and she actually listens to the Princess and does as she says... " Clarke releases Maddie and moves away. "And now the Commander is dead. So yes, she'll never come back." 

Clarke leaves and shuts the hatch on her way out. 

 

\---

 

The next day Maddie isn't in a good mood, neither is Clarke. 

Clarke regretted leaving the girl alone in the shelter as soon as she got back to the empty car. But she didn't do anything. She couldn't. She needed to think, but thinking was the last thing she was able to do. Her mind was screaming. She needed time. 

She mostly just slept on the hood of the car until the morning woke her up with a light rain and an empty mind. "I'm sorry," Clarke wrote in the note she left beside Maddie sleeping when she went to open the hatch. 

The thing about a new day in a dead forest is that it reminds you that nothing really matters. So Clarke just gives Maddie space and keeps the usual routine. 

Clarke sits on a rock next to the car and goes through each frequency of the radio and hears static noise. She does it every day. Sometimes she even talks to the silence: Hey, is anyone out there? It's safe to come back. Or, on the days she's feeling more adventurous, she talks about their day. Today, though, she just mechanically goes through it while she's waiting for the water to boil in the pot.

"Good morning," Clarke says, looking up when Maddie finally arrives, 

a sullen look on her eyes and holding the beanie in her hand tightly. The girl has been in the shelter all morning. 

Maddie looks back, her eyes sending daggers.

"How can you talk to me after leaving me there?"

"I'm sorry," Clarke says it again. 

"You should be."

"So I guess you didn't change your mind." 

"No, we need to get there."

"We can't leave," Clarke says. "It's dangerous."

"Haven't we been training every day for dangerous?"

"True, but what do you expect to find, Maddie? Be honest with yourself and think about it. You know I wouldn't simply disagree with it. You want to cross the desert, which is already a risk. And after that, what? The places on that map don't exist anymore." 

"Really?" Maddie shows the old cloth. "It's black blood, like ours, you said that it was created to survive the radiation after those explosions. This is what mom was talking, that I had a greater importance to our people and I need to do it."

"Okay, stop right there. It was true, you are a nightblood and nightbloods were sent to Polis, but Polis doesn't exist anymore, Maddie."

"I don't care. You're not my mom. My real mother told me to find the symbol, I found it. Now I'm going there."

Clarke closes her eyes as her fingers grip the radio tighter. She wanted to make Maddie listen to her, just listen. If the girl could see it as clear as she can, Maddie would understand that they have food, they have a place to sleep and they know the animals around. They are safe. This would be trouble for nothing. But the young girl clenches her jaw and stares back with her green eyes, daring Clarke to disagree with her. 

"Okay," Clarke says. She takes a deep breath and puts the radio on the ground.

"Okay?" Maddie repeats.

"Yeah. You didn't change your mind, but I changed mine. If you want to go, you should go." 

Maddie opens her mouth, surprised by it, but she crosses her arms.

"Aren't you coming?"

Clarke shakes her head, “No.”

“Please, come.” Maddie offers her hand, but Clarke ignores it.

"Someone needs to stay here and keep an eye..." Clarke's eyes fall on the radio. "Just in case."

The silence that comes next is filled with tension, it’s as hard as Maddie's eyes when Clarke looks up. 

"Look-" Clarke gets up and goes to Maddie- "I understand you. I wish I could make you understand me, but I guess, maybe, this is life. We need something to keep us moving, and this is yours." She takes Maddie's arm and looks at her tattoo. 

Through the years, Clarke learned to ignore the symbol. The damn eight interrupt with four dots. Maybe a part of her always knew it wouldn't end well. 

"Clarke," Maddie says, the voice catches in her throat and her eyes are bright with tears. "Come with me," the girl asks.

"You'll be alright. Remember what we trained." Clarke kisses her forehead. "You can always stay, though." Clarke blinks and Maddie yanks her arm away.

"No," Maddie says. "I'll prove you're wrong." She walks away.

Clarke sits with the radio and watches Maddie makes her bag. She takes more time than necessary, and they don't exchange a word. Clarke watches with the corner of her eyes Maddie taking forever to tie her shoelaces.

"The soup is almost ready," Clarke says, getting up to check the pot.

"I have to go."

"I always wanted more eggs, anyway."

Maddie finishes the tie pulling it hard e gets up. 

"I'm going."

"Okay," Clarke answers, adding the eggs to the water.

"You're not going to say anything?"

"Hmm..." Clarke looks up, one strand of hair falls on her face and she pushes it away. "May we meet again?" She smiles.

Maddie puts the beanie on her head, turns away and takes a few steps before stopping again and turning back.

"And you know what? That story sucks. The Princess is a coward and she needs to move on." 

This time, Maddie leaves. 

She really leaves.

Clarke hears her footsteps moving away into the woods until there's nothing, but silence. 


	2. Chapter 2

_“our backs_

_tell stories_

_no books have_

_the spine to_

_carry”_

**women of colour - rupi kaur**

 

The silence stays until it turns to noise, but a different type of noise. One that happens inside your head and fills up your ears. One that makes the world outside goes silent while your heart shatters.

Clarke didn't think it was going to happen. But looking back, she didn't think much. She looks at the ashes around the burned logs. She watched the fire die while she waited for the moment Maddie would come back but she never did.

The breaking point is when Clarke is throwing inside the rover and she finds the old dictionary. The fucking dictionary, Maddie loves it. After hearing stories, it was her favorite thing to do. 

Fuck. 

Clarke didn't think that Maddie was actually going. But she should've known. Maddie is a stubborn little thing. And now she doesn't have an option. Fuck the radio and fuck staying. Deep down, Clarke knows it's all a lie, it doesn't matter, they won't come back, they probably fucking dead like everybody else. And now the girl is risking her life on another dead-end journey. 

The thing is, Clarke is also a stubborn little thing. Maybe the greatest of Earth, since she's still alive after the end of the world and she's about to climb in the car to fucking die just to prove she is right. 

 

\---

 

Clarke finds Maddie just where she expected: near one of their meeting points at the other side of the forest. The girl smiles when she sees the car, but when Clarke stops the smile already disappeared and Maddie looks just unimpressed. 

"Are you lost?" Maddie asks, looking inside the window and still walking while Clarke drives slow by her side. 

"You forgot this," Clarke says, raising her hand with the dictionary. 

Maddie's eyes widen and one of her hands goes instinctively to her backpack. 

"Yeah, it seems that you need me." Clarke smiles.

Maddie clenches her jaw and shrugs.

"I left it behind, I don't want it." 

Clarke laughs and leans across the passenger seat to open the door.

"Let's go, kiddo. We can get to the edge of the desert by the end of the day if you stop wasting our time."

Maddie reluctantly climbs in the car and tosses her backpack onto the back seat.

"So this time you really changed your mind?" Maddie asks, taking her beanie off and cleaning the sweat from her forehead.

"You wouldn't last three days out there alone, Maddie."

"Yeah?" Maddie leans her head. "I always knew that all that training was a waste of time."

"You don't listen to me, and then you want to say I'm a bad teacher?"

"I thought you were training me to be independent and make my own choices, not to be exactly like you."

Ouch.

This is the start of a long day driving across the wasteland that the grounder territory has become. Sometimes for Clarke, it looks like a distorted picture of everything it was one day, a paradise of forests and green hills. Sometimes it is just what it is now: Life in its twisted way. 

The good part of living with a young girl is that when Maddie sees the blackish, dead grass, she doesn't see a dead field. For her, this is how things are supposed to be. 

For most of the time, Clarke likes to believe in this too. 

Now when they stop to spend the night at the edge of the desert, Maddie sits on a rock to drink water without realizing she's sitting over what was left of the Sankru, The Desert Clan, and Clarke's memories feel like a story she read in a book. 

The Clarke that came to that other Earth seems to be another person. It's hard to believe that she ever spent days with a bunch of teen delinquents talking loud in the woods. Everything was so bright back then. 

It could be real, it almost feels real, but the reality is the sand running through their ankles and dry lips. It's sitting inside the car beneath tattered blankets hearing a young girl whispering words from an abandoned dictionary. It's late at night, hours after the flashlight went off, hearing the metallic sounds the rocks make as they hit the car. Reality is the wind singing outside and realizing it has more meaning than old languages. 

 

\---

 

It takes two days to cross the desert. 

It takes more three to figure out where they are. 

Now they only have the shelter's map. A really great map that says they are on a highway when it's clear they're standing on an open field. 

But the hardest part comes later, when they find a river that shouldn't exist crossing their path. Clarke drives around trying to find a way around, but the forest only leads them away from the margin and to god knows where. 

"Okay," Clarke says, resting her forehead on the wheel and taking a deep breath, finding the energy to keep searching after a much-needed pause to rest.

"It's useless," Maddie says. "Even if there's a way to cross the river, we can't even see it because the forest is blocking us." 

"So we turn around and find the end of the forest," Clarke says, starting the car again.

"We've been doing this since yesterday, Clarke. We're only moving away."

"Do you think I like to spend more days on this?"

"So why don't we just leave the car?"

"Because this is an awful idea, Maddie."

"No, it isn't. You said this morning that this side has more forests and it's harder to drive around here."

Clarke didn't say this. She pointed out that this part has been inhabited for so long, different from where the grounders used to live, that the woods are thicker and it has less open path for the car. Okay, it was supposed to be a passive-aggressive remark to prove to Maddie that the place was fucking desert, and now it bit her in the ass. 

"No," Clarke says anyway. "We have shelter, we don't need to carry weight-" she's interrupted by Maddie pushing the handbrake and making the car jump. "What the fuck, Maddie!"

"We survived long enough without the car, we can do it," Maddie says. Clarke pushes her hand off the handbrake.

"Listen to me, kiddo, never, never do this. You could have killed us."

"I'm going." Maddie puts her beanie, opens the door and jumps to the ground before Clarke can do anything.

"Oh, no, not this shit again," Clarke says more to herself than to Maddie, covering her face with her hands again.

The apocalypse: easy. 

Teenagers: You'll be lucky to survive.

Clarke thinks about the time her mother came to Earth and they disagreed about everything. It makes Clarke appreciate her more now. How could Abby stand it? 

"Okay," Clarke says out loud, sighing. "Come back, let's find a better place to stop."

 

\---

 

"Do you think we'll come back?" Maddie asks while Clarke is behind her checking if the girl closed all the zippers of her backpack and is ready to leave. 

"No," Clarke answers. "We'll probably die before it."

"Why we're doing this, so?" Maddie raises the branch she's holding. Earlier Clarke made the girl gather a bunch so they could cover the car.

"Recreational decoration." Clarke finishes and pats on Maddie’s shoulder.

"Recre-what?" Maddie turns to her.

"The dictionary."

Maddie rolls her eyes and take off her giant backpack, puts on the ground and searches for the book. Meanwhile, Clarke finishes packing for herself.

"Recreational. R-E-C-R-E-A-T-I-O-N-A-L. Fuck, this word is big."

"Language," Clarke reprimands. 

Maddie takes a moment turning the pages.

"Fuck. F-U-C-K. Usually obscene: copulate. Clarke, have you ever copulat-"

Clarke throws a twig at her. She knows the girl does it on purpose, it isn't the first time this word has come up.

"You know what?" Clarke says. "Go float yourself." She raises her eyebrows and Maddie answers with a sullen look. This word may exist in this dictionary, but this meaning doesn't and Maddie hates it. 

And this is how their days often go by. The usual bickering, training and survival always a part of it. If Clarke is honest with herself, which she isn't, she'd admit that leaving the grounder territory didn't change much their routine and exploring was far more interesting than repeatedly doing the same exercises. 

"Wait, Clarke!" Maddie says when they're finishing covering the car. "Are you going to leave this behind?" She points to the necklace hanging on the rearview mirror. 

Clarke looks at the bird pendant.

"Isn't it from the space warrior?" Maddie asks.

"It's _spacewalker_ ," Clarke corrects her. "And yes, just forget it. We have to go." She covers the windshield with one last branch.

The walk into the forest is peaceful. The trees are covered with green leaves and they can hear birds singing. Clarke asks Maddie to keep her eyes open because any sign of life can mean danger. Or food. As they walk, she searches the ground for tracks. But all in all, it's a quiet afternoon and they soon start hearing the sound of flowing water coming from the river. 

"So..." Maddie says too soon, breaking the peace. "Can we have a new story today?"

"No."

"Why don't you want to tell stories anymore?"

"It's not that I don't want to, I just don't want to think about it right now."

"This is why you left the necklace?"

"It's just a necklace, Maddie."

"No, you told me, it belonged to the space warrior."

"It's spacewalker, because she walked on space."

"And now she lives in space." Maddie nods. "Do you think she's walking out there?" Maddie looks up at the sky through the branches of the trees, it's just a pale white above the green shadows.

"I don't know, Maddie."

"I think she is, because she's a warrior. Don't you have any new story about her?"

Clarke stops walking. Sometimes she does have new stories. Details she didn't tell, adventures she invented. Raven is one of Maddie's favorite heroes even if the girl doesn't know her real name. Maddie knows that Clarke knew someone named Raven, it’s written on the strap of her rifle with many other names from the past. But that Raven is the spacewalker? No. It just never came up. And after a time, Clarke decided that this was a good distinction between fiction and reality. 

She does try to teach the girl about everything that happened as truthfully as possible, but she sees when her eyes wander, when Maddie is more excited about fiction than reality. And why Clarke would deny her that comfort?

"Okay," Clarke says. "The river is right there-" she points to the visible water beyond the end of the woods- "I need to go back, I forgot something."

"It's the necklace, isn't it?"

"Yes, Maddie, it is the necklace. It isn't fair to R- _her_. It's important to respect the memory of those who are gone."

"Gone to space, right?"

"Whatever."

"Is she the girl on the drawing?" Maddie asks.

It seems that now that they broke the silence about the drawing, the girl is determined to know more about it. Clarke just ignores her.

"Wait by the river, stay away from the water and keep your eyes open. Anything happens-"

"I kill!" 

Clarke pushes her towards the water.

"No, you run back to me," she says.

 

\--- 

 

The pale sky over the trees is already turning into an orange tone when Clarke returns. She has the necklace around her neck, and she tries too hard not to think about what they are doing. It'd be much smarter if they went back to the car and slept in safety for the night. But they’d lose the day.

All these thoughts disappear as soon as she arrives and finds Maddie walking on water. No, not on the water, but on something that looks like the top of a wooden table. 

"Look, it's a raft!" Maddie says when she sees Clarke.

"A what?"

"Raft. R-A-F-T. Raft is a flat structure for transportation on water. We read that, it's like a boat." 

"No, it's not."

"I told you, walking we'd find a way to cross the river." 

"Maddie..." Clarke sighs. 

She doesn't even bother talking anymore, she just kneels at the margin of the river and reaches for the "raft." Maddie is faster, though, and she rows with the branch she's using as a paddle to move it. 

"Really?" Clarke says, sitting on the ground, watching the raft float away. "It won't work forever, you know? I won't go this time."

"Are you afraid?"

"Yes. And you should be too."

"I'm going alone." Maddie rows again. "See you on the other side."

"Come back, Maddie." 

"Are you coming with me?" 

Clarke doesn't answer. Instead, she takes off her heavy backpack and leans on it, watching the water run in front of her, the river wending its way around the stones. Her legs are sore after walking all day. 

She cleans the sweat from her forehead and takes her water to drink. It's not so bad, after all. The air is cool near the water, and it's calming to watch Maddie row away, moving swiftly across the water, to the other side. Her little black beanie pointing to the orange sky.

When it comes, it's just a light tremor on the surface of the water, but it feels like lightning striking in the middle of the day. Clarke is up on her feet in a second.

"Maddie, come back, now," she screams to the girl. 

"Did you change your mind?"

"We're not playing games now. I'll do whatever you want, just come back here."

A small wave hits the raft, and Maddie falls on her knees.

"Did you see that?" The girl asks.

Now there's no doubt something is moving underneath the water. The surface of the river is a mirror made of green, a dark type of green, and the light waves here and there are the only sign of where the Thing is. 

"Take the paddle, row back!" Clarke says.

Maddie takes out her knife instead. 

"For the love of god, you're not going to fight it, Maddie. Come back!" Clarke pulls the strap of the rifle to her front and grabs the gun. 

Just as she does it, a giant snake head comes out of the water and bites the side of the raft. Maddie sinks the knife into its whitish head, and it barely affects the creature. Clarke runs to the water. 

"Here, you bastard!" She fires at the body of the snake, away from Maddie, and the bullets explode in the water. 

The snake disappears beneath the surface while the girl struggles to balance herself on what is left of the raft. The attack pushed her towards Clarke, but she still has to row back to the shore. 

The water is up to Clarke's waist now, but at each step the river becomes deeper. She can't even see her feet. And with all the movement Maddie is doing to row back, the water is splashing everywhere, making waves in all directions that are covering any movement beneath the surface. 

Clarke realizes two things:

1\. She will die.

2\. She will take a fucking snake with her. 

Clarke moves further into the water.

"Are you seeing it?" She asks. 

The girl doesn't answer, Maddie is too focused rowing for her life.

Clarke knows that the snake is still around, she needs to think fast. The half-eaten raft is slowing Maddie down, she'd be at the shore now if she were swimming. Or dead. Probably dead. 

The water starts trembling again.

"MADDIE, LISTEN TO ME," Clarke screams at the top of her lungs. "I NEED YOU TO FOCUS, AND WHEN I SAY JUMP, YOU JUMP AND SWIM, OKAY?"

"JUMP?!"

"TRUST ME."

Maddie takes a deep breath.

"Okay," her answer is low and rushed, but Clarke nods back. 

"Get ready."

Clarke adjusts her hands on the rifle and controls her breathing. She thinks about the names written on the strap of her rifle, everyone she knew and is gone now. She thought she didn't have space for anyone else.

At this point, the water is over her chest, it's icy cold, but she doesn't care. Clarke checks the grenades attached to her hips. This fucking snake started the fight, it better be ready for her now. 

"Clarke?" Maddie calls with a shaken voice.

"I'm here, kiddo, it's okay."

This time when the wave comes, Clarke sees the white shadow just underneath the surface.

"Jump!" Clarke screams. The sound is still leaving her mouth when the girl splashes into the water, just as a giant mouth crashes over what remained of the raft.

Clarke shoots at the snake, but between the anxiety, Maddie jumping and the raft crackling, the shot sounds seem to arrive late. Just before a scream. 

"Maddie!" Clarke calls, trying to figure out what happened with Maddie in the middle of the troubled water. She can't step further because she will lose her feet and it will be impossible to aim.

"Clarke!" Maddie calls back, appearing on the surface, much closer now. 

"Just keep swimming, you can do it, Maddie. It's just like we trained."

Clarke sees the long body of the snake turning underneath the water, it moves faster than Maddie could ever swim. Before the girl could swing her arm again, she'd be in its mouth. So Clarke shoots. The water explodes everywhere and she doesn't know if she's hitting anything, but she leaves a trail of bullets behind Maddie. Her arm is hurting for having to recharge so fast, but she keeps shooting, until Maddie reaches her and Clarke can pull and push the girl to the shore.

They crash on the ground out of the water, and just when they hit the floor, the giant head appears on their backs, jumping after them. Clarke only has the time to take the grenade on her waist and throw.

"Did you just-" Maddie starts, but the explosion covers her voice.

Snake bits fly everywhere and the rest of a tail slides back to the water. Clarke takes this time to breathe.

"Are you okay?" Clarke asks, checking the girl. Her beanie was lost somewhere, now her hair is wet, falling over her shoulders, and her white face is deadly cold because of the water. It takes a beat to Clarke see the gash on Maddie’s arm. 

When Clarke starts to take off her jacket to examine the cut, Maddie allows without any resistance.

"This was not like we trained," Maddie says, her voice is still shaky.

"As an old friend used to say, plans don't let very last long in battle," Clarke says.

"The Commander?" The girl asks. Clarke stops and looks up, Maddie offers a weak smile. "You're always quoting her."

"Am I?" Clarke reaches to grab her first aid kit inside the backpack, that now is wet and dirt with slimy pieces of the snake. "You're observant. We probably wouldn't have to deal with this-" she uses a knife to clean the pocket she wants to open- "if you used it to something useful." 

Clarke turns to Maddie with a smile, but it disappears from her face when she sees how Maddie clenches her jaw and looks straight to the ground. 

The conversation turns into a grave silence while Clarke works on her arm. It was just a superficial cut, more likely caused by splintered wood than the snake, so Clarke just cleans to avoid infection and bandages it. 

"Where is your rifle?" Maddie asks when she finishes. 

"It's lost," Clarke says, she feels bare without the strap on her shoulder. And angry. Maddie also lost her backpack with everything on it. 

Maddie seems to realize the same thing, though. Her eyes widen, and she stands ups, stopping at the edge of the water. 

"My dictionary," she says, scanning the water as if it was going to appear there.

It doesn't.

Even the broken bits of the raft were already washed away by the river. 

"Let's go, Maddie." Clarke puts a hand on her shoulder. "We have to prepare for the night."

 

\---

 

Maddie barely talks for the rest of the day. She does whatever Clarke asks and after eating, she gets under the blanket and turns her back to the fire. 

Clarke finds herself in a strange kind of quietness. She's resting with her back against a tree, legs stretched near the fire. They've walked far enough from the river, so if any animal is close, the sound won't be muffled by the water, which is important. Clarke still feels her arms aching after the struggle with the rifle, but all in all, she's doing fine.

"Do you want to know the story behind the necklace?" Clarke asks hours later, when she realizes Maddie is still awake, but the girl doesn't answer. "Well, I want to tell it anyway. Once upon a time, there was a boy known as spacewalker..."

"Another spacewalker?" Maddie asks, turning to her. 

Clarke smiles, she knew it would get her attention.

"Yes," she answers. "But he wasn't a real spacewalker. He just made everybody believe he was one. Do you know why?"

Maddie shakes head.

"Because one day, the real Spacewalker was caught illegally spacewalking. The thing is, in space the punishment for crimes made by people older than 18 years was death, and she just had completed 18 years."

"But she survived," Maddie says, almost as a protest.

"Yes, she did. Since he was younger, he'd be just sent to prison. So the boy took the blame to save her and this is why everybody knew him as the spacewalker. It was him that made this necklace for her." Clarke picks up the pendant and looks at it. It's ironic how trivial things can resist for so long, while everything that matters goes away.

"It's a bird," Maddie says, resting her head on her good arm and looking at the sky. 

"It's a raven."

"What's a raven?"

"Look at the d-" she stops, biting her lip and hoping Maddie didn't hear it- "It's just a type of bird."

There's silence, and Clarke wished she could know what the girl was thinking. 

"Where is the boy now?" Maddie asks. 

"Dead," Clarke says, making Maddie instantly turn her eyes to her. Clarke nods to confirm. "The Princess killed him." 

"It can't be. The Princess kills everybody."

Clarke snorts. 

"Yeah, it seems so."

"Your stories are awful, Clarke. Why everything has to end in death?"

"Believe it or not, kiddo, this is what I ask myself too. But look around, this place, Earth... it had people everywhere. Even I never had the chance to be alive to see this. It was a hundred years before I was born. Now everybody is gone, Maddie. Everybody is dead."

Maddie looks up to the sky again. 

"I think he could just be in space with the space warrior," Maddie says. 

"No, I'm pretty sure the Princess killed him."

"No, death can't be the only end. He's in space with the space warrior spacewalking."

Clarke feels her heart twitching and a flood of memories threatening to surface. She shakes her head and laughs instead, concentrating in the admirable resistance of the little girl across the fire.

"Whatever, kid. Maybe he is."


	3. Chapter 3

_"i know it’s hard_

_believe me_

_i know it feels like_

_tomorrow will never come_

_and today will be the most_

_difficult day to get through_

_but i swear you will get through_

_the hurt will pass_

_as it always does_

_if you give it time and let it_

_so let it go_

_slowly_

_like a broken promise_

_let it go.”_

**milk and honey - rupi kaur**

 

 

Weeks later, exploring isn’t that fun anymore.

One moment, Clarke is resting on her backpack watching the sky turn into black. The next, she's waking up under a blazing blue sky.

"Good morning," Maddie says, and Clarke sits so fast she gets dizzy. The girl is a few steps away, cutting the edges of a thick branch with a knife.

"Why didn't you wake me up?" Clarke asks.

"I'm sorry." Maddie puts a loose strand of hair behind her ear. It keeps falling over her face since she lost the beanie. "You looked like you needed to rest, and I was keeping watch."

"Okay." Clarke sighs and rubs her eyes. "But don't let it happen again."

Maddie nods and goes back to play with the knife and the branch.

Clarke opens the maps she was working on the night before, now they're all wrinkled because she slept over them. One is the printed map from the shelter, the other is the one she has been making. After the days traveling turned into weeks, her drawing has become more like a path. She doesn't know what's beyond it, certainly not what the printed map shows.

"Your map says we're in a black dot named Midland." Clarke puts one hand on her hip and looks around. "How do you like it?"

They are in the middle of an open field that goes on and on until it reaches the edge of another forest. The grass here is yellow, the soil on these lands has a reddish color, and it feels more like dust. But besides that, the only remarkable thing is how any vegetation still survived under the hot sun.

"Boring," Maddie answers without looking up from what she's doing with the branch. "Are we going to eat today?"

"Let me just finish with this," Clarke says and starts to add the discoveries of the last day to her map.

Trees. More trees. Mosquitoes. Trees. _How can I make my back stop hurting, I'm too old for this_. And trees.

Fascinating.

When she's doing it, though, her eyes fall on one of the marks on the printed map. It has dots and tiny stars to mark things that one day used to mean something, but this one is different. It's a square, and under closer inspection, Clarke realizes it was made with a pen. She searches the map caption and right there, beside the square, is handwritten: _4 MAE JEMISON ST_.

Clarke looks up, Maddie is still playing with the branch and the knife, then looks again at the tiny square and the caption. It wasn't part of the original map. It was added there. Clarke feels her stomach turn, and she thinks she may be getting sick.

"Maddie," she says before she can think.

"What?" The girl looks at her.

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

Clarke folds the map and puts it in the pocket of her backpack with the other.

"Yes," she answers and gets up, going to Maddie. "How are you?"

"Hungry," Maddie deadpans.

Clarke laughs and kisses her forehead, putting the loose strand of hair behind her ear again.

"Everything will be okay, my little natblida," she says. For her surprise, Maddie hugs her, leaning her head on Clarke's chest.

"You're being weird," Maddie says.

Clarke kisses the top of her head laughing again.

"I'm hungry too," she says and decides to prepare the food.

"Food" is the rest of a gecko she caught in the woods the last day, and it's barely enough for one. She turns to Maddie while it cooks.

"And if we do something with your hair?" Clarke asks.

"Are you going to cut it short like yours?"

"No. I was thinking about something a little different." Clarke sits behind Maddie and starts playing with her hair. "I'm not good at it, it's been long since I tried to do a braid, but... it may help," she says.

"Does it hurt?" Maddie asks.

"Of course no," Clarke says, laughing. "But do you want to know something? This is how the grounder warriors used to wear their hair."

Maddie turns her head to look at her, messing with what Clarke was doing. She just sighs and waits for the girl to talk.

"Clarke, please, be honest. Were you a grounder warrior?"

"I already told you I wasn't."

"But you are a nightblood." Maddie looks at her with narrowed eyes. "And if you're not a warrior, how do you know how to do their hair?"

"Are you trying to steal a story, kiddo?"

"It's not a story if you're talking about you." Maddie raises her eyebrows, too smart for her own good.

Clarke laughs and makes Maddie turn her head forward again.

"Okay, but let me work. I'm already bad at it enough without you ruining it."

"Impossible. You're good at everything."

This time Clarke laughs for real. The perks of being the only person someone knows.

"You're too pure." Clarke kisses her head and starts working. She keeps talking, "Anyway, I learned it many times, from different people. But the first time..." Clarke traces her fingers through her hair. "I met a girl, and we were..."

_We were in bed. She took my hand, she showed my fingers how to do it._

_We shouldn't be there, and it was one of the few moments we got from the many stolen from us. On my mind, that afternoon never really ended. Sometimes I'm confused about what actually happened, and what my mind gave me after it._

_Some things I'm sure, though. I remember running my fingers through her braids, picking up one and making her smile, a type of smile made to be kissed, and I kissed it, and she smiled more. This is when she touched my hand, taught my fingers, this is why I can never forget it._

"Clarke?" Maddie calls.

"Hm?"

"You just stopped talking."

"I'm sorry, I think I got lost in it, but look-" she shows a braid finished- "I did one."

Maddie looks at it and smiles.

"I liked it."

"Did you?"

Maddie nods.

"So let's continue. We met, she was a warrior, and one day she taught me how to do it."

"This is the entire story?"

"Yes."

"Is she the girl in the drawing?"

Yes. But hearing it shouldn't make Clarke feel her heart sinking.

"She's the girl that fought with me that giant gorilla I told you about," Clarke says, instead.

"You said you didn't kill it."

"We didn't. She tried, for me. She probably would die tr..." Clarke stops talking. She also stops braiding Maddie's hair.

"She's gone, isn't she?" Maddie asks.

Clarke presses her lips into a thin line and doesn't answer. Maddie turns to her and hugs Clarke tightly.

"I'm sorry," Maddie whispers. "And I'm sorry about the snake, I should've listened to you."

"Yes, you should," Clarke says, wrapping her arms around Maddie. Somehow, the hole inside her chest seems bigger, and she holds the girl tighter. "But I'm glad you're here now."

"I wish I was back there and got to meet all those people like you," Maddie says.

Clarke doesn't find the right words to answer. She has memories, Maddie has... stories about people that are gone. How do you prepare a girl for the fact that she'll be forever alone? Is it even worth it?

"I wouldn't want you to," Clarke says. "The pain... it never really goes away. At least this way you are free."

"But you are alone," Maddie answers. The answer comes so simply, and so fast, that is strikes Clarke in an unsettling way.

"No," Clarke says.

For some reason, the fact that this little girl on her lap thinks she needs to protect Clarke makes it all worse. Clarke plays with her half-braided hair and runs her thumb on her small chin.

"Listen to me, Maddie. _I-_ I have you, and this is enough for me. But you? You deserve better than this."

 

\---

 

Travelling doesn't get easier. Maybe it's the hardest thing Clarke has ever done, and she survived the end of the world. The forests are endless, the animals different and dangerous. One time, they are hunted by something that one day may have been an alligator, and now is just a weird type of reptile, not one you'd want to meet. And these are the good days.

The other days their lips are so dry they crack, bleeding, and the girls stumble in the middle of their walk just because they are too tired, or hungry. Or probably both.

 From those days, Clarke would remember only one thing: Maddie holding her hand. Even under the hot sun and with wet hands slipping, the girl would use the last of her strength to hold tighter.

They don't talk about this new thing, though, they just keep going.

Clarke also doesn’t talk with Maddie about the square on the map, she doesn’t want to see the girl getting her hopes up. She's already a fool for both of them.

So when the road appears, Clarke simply keeps walking. Maddie looks around, a glint of curiosity in her eyes, but she’s too focused on putting one foot after the other to talk. The possibility of finding water ahead is better than anything.

After walking for a day, Clarke realizes she never saw a road before. Of course, she saw pictures of it, but she never got to walk on one. The road, as everything these days, is decadent. The asphalt is covered in sand, it's even slippery because of it, and at some points, the red dirt has covered the gray entirely, but in general, it managed to resist somehow.

Maybe the road is a stubborn little thing too.

Maybe this world was made for the stubborn. The ones that can't find a way to give up.

And as the stubborn people they are, Clarke and Maddie don't stop.

And then it appears. At the end of the road, on the horizon, the shapes of a city. It isn’t like an old city, the ones Clarke saw in pictures, it’s their ruins. But again, it still more sign of human beings than anything they ever encountered until now.

After 6 years alone, it is... it is easy to forget what humans can do.

They walk into the city in the middle of the next morning. None of them had much sleep that night. Maddie is awed, looking wide-eyed at everything. Clarke, though, has her handgun ready and inspects every shadow twice.

The town is silent like in a lazy afternoon. Everything is covered in a thick layer of red dirt, that is moved around, careless, by the occasional breeze.

 

"What is this?" Maddie asks, and Clarke turns to find a bike on the ground. At least it's what she thinks it is after a closer look. In reality, it's a black burned metal twisted in some parts, but it still looks like it was supposed to be a bike one day.

"Don't touch anything," Clarke says instead. "Pay attention to your tracks." She points at the footprints they are leaving.

They pass something that looks like a two-story house, except it doesn’t have a roof or half of the walls on the second floor. The rest of the street is the same. If it wasn't for the wreckage around, it would look like someone tried quickly to build a residential area forgetting half of everything.

"Do you think we'll find anyone here?" Maddie asks.

"Of course not,” Clarke answers quickly. _Maybe another nightblood_ , she thinks. “Anyway, just… pay attention. We can’t see inside the buildings, something might be hiding.”

 

They walk until the first intersection, where they find a lone street sign standing. The edges are burned and Clarke needs to clean the dirt covering the letters.

 

"Mae Jemison," Maddie reads it, she reaches for her backpack and stops, letting her hand fall to her side. “What does it mean?” She asks Clarke.

"It's the name of a street." Clarke is already looking down the street. Her eyes stop on a house that has the number 4 written in dark paint all over the front. "Okay, Maddie. Get your gun and walk behind me,” she says.

 

Maddie frowns but obeys.

 

Clarke realizes that if anyone is paying attention, they already saw them. It’s impossible to miss the two lone live beings walking down the desert street. She adjusts her grip on the gun.

"We come in peace," Clarke says out loud.

"Oh my god, is there anyone here?" Maddie whispers to Clarke, she's looking everywhere trying to find it.

"I don't know," Clarke answers. And it's the truth.

For the first time in years, she's not sure anymore.

The house is the only one still standing, it even looks new near the wreckage around her. It's a gray square box with a flat roof. There's only a door near the left corner. No windows. No other openings. Nothing.

 "It's a real house, Clarke," Maddie says. She's holding the handgun that is too big for her small hands, and she tries to look concentrated, even if her green eyes are gleaming with curiosity.

Clarke stops at the door, pointing her gun at it. The door is solid metal. The surface is flat and shiny like the stainless steel table they found at the shelter. There's no handle, no lock, no hinges, nothing to get a grip on. Up close, it barely looks like a door.

Clarke plants her palm on the cool metal and presses. Nothing happens. She runs her hand over the surface until she feels a slight salience and notices a rectangular space in the middle of the door, the size of her palm. When she cleans the dust off, a light comes on and Maddie cheers.

"Can I?" Maddie asks.

Clarke looks around the deserted street, to the shadows inside the windows and doors around them.

"Okay," she answers, giving Maddie space and checking the gun.

Maddie is not as careful as Clarke, she just puts her palm over the rectangle and waits. A low humming noise starts, getting Clarke's attention.

"Do it again," Clarke asks.

Maddie pulls the sleeve of her shirt up and places her palm over the rectangle again. The humming noise starts, and a thin red line scans the hand. Nothing happens.

"Well..." Clarke cleans her hand on her jacket. "There's two bad news and one good."

Maddie puts one hand under her own chin and narrows her eyes as she considers it.

"Okay," she says, deciding. "Tell one bad, one good and then another bad."

 

Clarke can't help but smile seeing the girl take it so seriously.

 

"The first bad news is that maybe we're just not allowed to access. The good news is that if we find a way in, we'll have energy and a place to spend the night."

"And the other bad news?"

 

Clarke looks at the house. It's a box of concrete hidden in plain sight. Well, not really hidden considering the number painted on the front, signaling it. Whoever made it, didn't think anyone would survive to find it, or didn't think someone would be able to break in.

Or maybe it was just made to be found.

 

"You may be right about the map," Clarke says.

 

\---

 

Clarke pulls some concrete blocks from the rubble of the neighboring houses, arrange them around a fire and calls it a day. At this point, they already checked the houses in the street, and the best they found was a squirrel hiding, that now was being roasted for dinner.

She sits there setting up the radio to go through her usual routine. Meanwhile, she hears Maddie talking to the door, still trying to open it. If Clarke could contact Raven right now, she'd know what to do for sure.

But as expected, nobody answers. She's not even sure why she still does it. The last weeks she barely had time to try the radio and, honestly, it didn't make a difference.

"And if we explode it?" Maddie asks after she gets tired of the door and goes to sit with her. Clarke laughs.

 

"This is what the spacewalker would say." Clarke stops and looks at the door. "Should we...?"

 

Maddie looks at her with wide eyes.

 

"Are you really considering it?" The girl asks.

"No..." Clarke says, but none of them seems convinced by it. "Okay, maybe. But we need to be careful because these buildings are old and we may bring it all down." When she says it, she realizes this is true. "Okay, we won't do it, it's a bad idea."

"It is," Maddie agrees, but her eyes are still bright with fun. "I never saw you like this."

"It's the sun," Clarke says, looking at the bright blue sky. "I'm tired."

"I'm hungry," Maddie says.

"It's almost ready, let me check your wound first."

“It’s healed,” the girl complains but shows her arm anyway.

 

Maddie is right. It has been healed for at least a few days, but Clarke wants to be sure.

 

“It will leave a scar,” Clarke notices.

“It’s gonna be my first big scar!” Maddie smiles.

 

Clarke looks at the girl, she can’t believe it.

 

“And the last," she says.

“But I want to be a warrior.”

“Now you want to be trained?” It’s a rhetorical question, but Maddie nods.

“I was thinking about it, I’m a nightblood, you said we were warriors, like that girl, and I was irresponsible with my duty. I want to change that.”

“Your duty is to survive, Maddie. And to…” live, she wants to say. But when Clarke looks around, to what was left of the world for this girl, it’s hard to even believe in herself.

 

One day, just where they are sitting, kids ran around playing. Couples kissed under the street lights. Noises were heard coming from each house, where different people were alive, breathing, worrying about a football game or any other mundane thing. Certainly not how to be a warrior at 13 years old.

 

“Do you want to hear a story?” Clarke asks.

Maddie shakes her head.

“I wish we could try to open the door instead.”

“Suit yourself.” Clarke leans back and closes her eyes.

 

The stories she wanted to tell were from a time she never got to see, anyway.

When she was young, Clarke actually thought they would rebuild the world one day. Of course, she was raised as part of a transitional generation that would never see Earth, but maybe her children would. How could her life have changed so drastically?

"I don't understand it," Maddie says. Clarke opens her eyes and sees that the girl has opened the printed map and is studying it. Maddie continues, "Why would they send us here, if we can't open the door?"

Clarke sighs and looks at the blue sky. There isn't even one single cloud on the motherfucker.

"This is because nobody sent us here, Maddie. Please, understand this, we found somebody else's map."

"But it has my symbol and before you say it can mean anything, why does the cloth we found in the shelter has nightblood? It's my blood."

Touché.

Clarke's eyes snap open, and when she looks at Maddie, she sees the same spark in her eyes. They both make a run for the door.

Clarke is faster and is already there cutting her own finger when Maddie arrives. She passes her finger on the rectangle, leaving a trail of black blood, and hears the soft humming starting. This time, there's a beep and a click releasing the door.

Maddie cheers and hugs Clarke, who wraps her arms around the girl and lifts her.

 

"Yes!" Maddie screams. "I was right!"

"It seems so, my natblida. It seems so."

 

\---

 

 

The inside looks like the outside: It's a box. Divided into three areas. The first room that has a bed made with clean sheets, but not like the ones the grounders use, they are like the old blankets Clarke used in the Ark. The difference is that this one seems to be brand new, without the holes and patches accumulated after passing through many generations. There's also a desk. On the wall behind it, there's a printed map that looks like the one they have. Clarke's favorite part is the stove in the corner.

The second area is a garage where they found a car. Just by looking at it saved ten years of Clarke's life.

The third is what makes Clarke decide to stay for days: a bathroom with running water.

Who'd have thought that paradise would look like this?

During the first days, Clarke starts a relationship with the pillow and fall in love with the mattress. If she still didn't need to find food, she probably would stay there for the rest of her life. She's happy even if she has to share the single bed with Maddie.

One morning she realizes that this is exactly the purpose of the place: it's a pit stop, a resting spot. She can't know for sure, of course. But there's nothing there besides gear for traveling and other copies of the map, with different handwritten annotation.

When is time to get back to work, Clarke sits on the desk looking at the maps and comparing it with her own.

The big question on her mind is: Who left this for who?

Maddie can say anything she wants about being a nightblood, Clarke isn't naive like that. It may have led them there, she admits it, but it was a path planned for someone else.

However, just at the other side of the wall in front of her, the car is still waiting in the garage, untouched. The shelter had the cloth with blood, though. Maybe someone got to the shelter but didn't make it to this safe house? It's very likely if what they had to survive indicates anything.

She rests her head on her hand, looking at the open door. The sunlight is invading the house, leaving a golden color on the ground, and Clarke realizes that for the first time in years she's feeling desire to paint. It's comforting for a moment or two until she is reminded of Maddie playing outside, which makes her brain starts to go back to the usual worrying. She shakes it off.

Clarke has other things to worry about now, like how they'll make the rest of this journey. All the maps end on the same symbol, all the way across the land. They still have one-third of the travel to do.

She looks at the infinity symbol made with a pen. If she still had any doubt, the black blood confirmed it. This part Maddie got right. It is that infinity symbol.

After all this time, Becca is still playing with them.

If L- _Titus_ had said anything about it, she would remember, right?

It's not like she had time to understand anything, though.

Fortunately, time is all she has now.

And even if they don't find anything... this city is the closer of an old city she has ever seen. If this place resisted, what more can be out there?

As if answering it, a shadow comes running inside the house, and Clarke has the knife pointed to Maddie's throat before she sees it's the girl.

"Maddie!" Clarke says, lowering the knife and feeling her heart loses its pace. "I told you not to do it."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." The girl raises her hand in surrender. "I just found something, you need to see it."

"Great, but you're not going to skip your shower again. Nice try."

"No, it's not that." Maddie takes her hand. "Please, come with me."

Clarke follows her. After taking her gun and the knife, but she does.

So, what is it?

Is it a bird?

Is it a plane?

No! It is...

A glowing butterfly.

Maddie follows it to one of the near houses.

When Clarke first found the place, she was surprised to see that a tree has grown inside the walls, breaking the ceiling to the second floor. It was so dark inside that they needed flashlights even during the day, and she laughed with Maddie about how weird it was to step on the fluffy grass, where it replaced the flooring-plates.

Now it has changed, though. The open room echoes their footsteps as they walk in to find the house lit. The tree is glowing with a blue light, that spreads all around the abandoned space, creating an eerie atmosphere.

The butterfly finds its place there with the others, tiny green butterflies that irradiate the same glow as they fly in circles.

Clarke presses her lips into a thin line, she reaches for Maddie's hand and pulls the girl to her arms.

"Are you okay?" Maddie asks, confused.

"It has been a long time, I guess," Clarke murmurs. Her vision is blurred, and she closes her eyes, resting her chin on Maddie's head.

The girl holds Clarke with her skinny arms and doesn't say anything. She doesn't need to. They're together and this is enough.

 

\---

 

The last day in the safe house starts before dawn. The car is already on the street, waiting. Clarke is almost pleased with what they managed to save for the trip. Half of the trunk is just water. If her lips still hurting say anything, it probably isn't even enough. It will have to be, though.

"Maddie, what are you doing?" Clarke calls for the girl. Maddie went back inside and is taking forever.

A moment later the girl appears, her hair is braided back like Clarke has done the night before. Seeing Maddie standing there, making sure the door is properly closed, Clarke realizes that the girl has become a bit taller.

Maddie doesn't look like a kid anymore. She's a teenager, with sharp angles replacing her round cheeks and dark green eyes that scan the street around them with trained attention. When she walks, her back is straight and her steps confident.

Clarke is so caught up in this that she almost misses the package on Maddie’s hands. Two days ago Maddie asked her how people wrapped gifts in the past. Clarke didn’t pay attention to it considering that she’s used to answering all kind of random questions, but now it makes sense.

"Hey," Maddie says, stopping in front of her.

"I thought you had changed your mind," Clarke says, a daring look in her eyes.

Maddie smiles, a contained smile that makes her eyes bright.

"Never," Maddie says. Then she straightens her back and offers the package to Clarke. "I did this for you."

Clarke takes the package. Maddie wrapped it on one of those extra maps and held it in place with old wires.

"Good?" Maddie asks.

Clarke nods and opens it, revealing a rectangular piece of wood. Clarke recognizes it as the one Maddie has been playing with. She looks at the girl, eyebrows raised. Maddie nods to encourage her to look at the smooth surface, covered with tiny words.

No, not words. Names.

Wells.

Jake.

Anya.

Lincoln.

Finn.

Abby.

 _Lexa_.

Clarke looks between the names scratched on it and Maddie, without words.

"I wanted to do something since you lost your rifle," Maddie says, looking away. "I didn't remember all the names, but... I hope it's something."

Clarke looks at the piece of wood again. She sees the ones that are missing. Names she has written over and over again on the strap of her rifle. The name “Lexa” is still the biggest one of them. It was the first. She didn't plan to make it like that. She didn't plan anything.

One day, a few years ago, this woman was sitting on the hood of a car, her rifle on her lap and her feet hanging above the ground. When she looked down, the woman realized that she had been scratching on the strap of the rifle. One name was written: Lexa.

Maybe it was at this moment Clarke realized that there was no way out of this.

Maybe she always knew.

Maybe she still doesn't know.

Because when Maddie raises one finger and asks her to wait for one more thing, Clarke isn't ready.

"It wasn't part of the gift at first, but when I found it in the car some days ago, I knew it'd be perfect." Maddie pulls a knife from her waistband. It isn't the simple one the girl has been using. It isn't the one Clarke has.

This one has a wooden handle of a dark brown with shades of black, it has curves made for a better grip. The blade is sharp, triangular, starting on the handler and finishing on the point. It's not a knife made to survive in the woods. It's a blade made to kill, and to be imposing.

Clarke knows when she first saw it.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end is here!

_"i will never understand_

_why you held me_

_if you were afraid of warmth"_

**you should have known i was a fire - rupi kaur**

 

Clarke doesn't accept the knife. She can't. She asks Maddie to leave it there, but she sees when the girl puts it on her waistband again. Clarke pretends she doesn't know and, honestly, it's not that hard when you're traveling.

The end of the world is always painted as bad, but it has its beauty. The silence spreads over the lands like the roots of the trees, which grow taking over parts of the road. Even if they have to stop the car sometimes and lose a few hours to clean the path, it's calming to know that the world is desert. No competition, no war. No human being left to start destroying everything again. 

They can sleep under the open sky, watching stars. They can do it for hours. 

One of these nights, Clarke realizes that this is what it means to be free. 

It's funny how it took years living on this empty planet and one stubborn little girl to make her realize that. But it's worth it. 

So they keep driving. The lands around them change day by day through the windows. More forests appear, these are thicker and made of trees with big green leaves. At some point, Maddie finds out that if you dig you can find water under the soil, easy like that. Even the clouds in this part of the world are different, more shapeless and taking over big parts of the sky.

It's beautiful. 

And this time, the map isn't what says that Clarke and Maddie are in the right direction. It's the fresh breeze that finds them before the ocean itself. 

“We’re getting close,” Clarke says, looking at the infinity symbol on the printed map, just near the beach.

A few hours later she stops the car in the middle of an empty street. They just arrived in one more city. Since Mae Jemison, they’ve been stumbling on more of those. 

This isn’t as good as it sounds, though. During the journey, the cities have become something like the forests or mountains around them: just one more part of nature. A long time ago, it probably could be a place for humans, but now even the buildings aren't that different from caves hiding wild animals. 

So what made Clarke stop wasn't the city, but the empty shopping cart tur on the ground blocking their way. 

Before opening the door to deal with it, Clarke looks at Maddie, and it's enough to make the girl grab her own handgun and nod. 

"I'll cover you," the girl says, grinning with a mischievous look.

Three days ago, Clarke was just enjoying her day on the road, when a wild beast attacked them, and she ran and fired at it, just to realize that the wild beast was a small raccoon that somehow pushed a rock to the ground, making the loud noise that startled Clarke. Maddie doesn't leave her alone since then. 

Clarke rolls her eyes and leaves the car. She won't admit it, but she likes to see Maddie being playful again. She loves the smug smile on her lips. The sparkle in her green eyes. It makes life seems as bright as the blue sky over their heads. 

Even if she has to kneel on the dirty ground and try to pull the cart that is clearly stuck. 

Somehow, the metal has melted and now is part of the asphalt. Clarke stands up and kicks it as hard as possible. The entire cart shakes, making a ringing sound that echoes on the empty buildings around them, making birds fly away. But that's just about it, the cart won't move.

She looks around. They are in a narrow street with small buildings on both sides, which resisted incredibly well compared to the other towns. It was supposed to be a good thing. No decrepit buildings, no wreckage blocking the way. But here they are, being stopped by a damn cart with no way around. They’ll have to move it, run over it or simply go back and try another path. 

Clarke doesn't have time to decide. When she hears the footsteps, her brain shuts down and it's not until they are surrounded by people that she realizes what is happening. 

People. Real people. Alive. 

Pointing their guns at her. 

It takes one more beat to Clarke realize that she's also pointing her handgun to the man that is closer. 

He is a tall, white man. Like the rest of them, he wears layers of ragged clothes. 

"It's okay, it's okay, we don't mean any harm," Clarke says raising her hands.

“Drop the gun,” the woman behind him commands with an accent that Clarke never heard before. 

Clarke looks around, counting at least five of them standing there with guns. So she obeys, putting it on the ground and raising her hands again. 

"There's another!" someone says. Clarke turns to find a woman trying to pull Maddie out of the car. The girl resists until her eyes find Clarke and a look is enough to make her stop. 

"It's just my girl and me,” Clarke says out loud, she needs to force her hoarse voice to talk. She realizes it has been a long time since she had to use this diplomatic tone. “We’re just traveling,” she says.

“Just innocent travelers that somehow have a working car?” the man points out, raising his eyebrows.

“We just found it,” Clarke says. 

“Bullshit, we saw you arriving,” one woman that is in the window of the building says, Clarke hasn’t even noticed her at first. Clarke takes a second look around and finds more two in windows. 

This makes eight of them. Nice. 

“Look, we just want to go back to the car and leave,” Clarke says. 

“Where did you come from?” The first woman asks, for the way everybody looks at her, she seems to be the leader. She’s a short black woman carrying a rifle too big for her arms, and yet, she doesn’t seem bothered by it. Her sharp eyes are focused on Clarke. 

“Where did you come from?” Clarke asks back. 

The woman clenches her jaw and the man gasps. Clarke just shrugs.

“What?" Clarke says. "I think it’s fair if I get to make questions too."

“You’re in no position to make demands,” the leader answers. With one look she makes the woman that has grabbed Maddie to put a knife on the girl's throat. Clarke grits her teeth and thinks about the gun on the ground. It's too risky, though. 

When she turns back, she finds the tall man walking towards her, and she raises her chin to dare him. 

“Or we could just be friends, right?” She glances at the leader over his shoulder. “I came from far, far away. Beyond the desert lands. We've been traveling for months. See? We don’t have nothing to hide.”

“She’s lying, Cali,” the tall man says to the leader. Clarke looks him up and down.

“If you’re a psychic, you’re a really bad one,” Clarke says, then bits her lips. She’s so used to live with only Maddie that she lost her way with people. She tries to fix it, “I’m sorry, but I’m really telling the truth.”

Xavier doesn't seem to like it and takes out a knife. Before he can use it, though, the leader speaks.

“It’s okay, Xavier,” Cali says. “She’s telling the truth.” 

Now Clarke really wants to ask if _she’s_ a psychic. 

“We don’t see many people coming from there these days,” Xavier says, looking at Clarke with narrowed eyes.

“There’s no one to come. The radiation killed everybody,” Clarke says. 

The leader presses her lips into a thin line and examines Clarke, then Maddie. 

"Not everyone," Cali says. "Not you."

“I know.” Clarke shrugs but crosses her arms. "Maybe it's a curse."

Xavier looks at Cali and Clarke sees something passing through their eyes. 

“And what about a knife?” Xavier takes a step closer. “Are you knife proof too?” 

“I don’t think so.” Clarke takes a step out of his reach. “And I don't like to try my luck once again. Can we leave now?” 

She’s completely ignored. 

“Show your arm,” the leader demands, stepping closer. 

“Why?” 

Xavier grabs her arm. His hands are so strong she can’t move it away. Clarke doesn’t try to resist anymore, she knows it's a lost battle. He slices her forearm, revealing the black blood as it starts to bleed.

The man smiles and the leader nods.

“Take them,” Cali orders. 

“Wait, wait!” Clarke says resisting Xavier. “But and you?”

“Me what?” Xavier asks.

“Are you knife proof?”

When he understands what's happening, the knife on his hand is already slicing his throat. Clarke needs to move fast, she pulls his body and uses his weight to turn, using it as a shield against the bullets that starts towards her. The leader is coming, and Clarke uses Xavier’s gun to shoot at her legs. 

That’s when an explosion hits them. Clarke is on the ground before she realizes what is happening. The air has become hot, and smoke covers the sky. She coughs, using her elbow to lift herself a little and examines the situation. Dark shapes are walking around, but she can’t hear them above the ring in her ears. She finds the source of the fire a few steps away, and her heart stops. 

It’s the car. Their car exploded. With everything that was inside of it. The radio. The maps. Medicine. 

And their way out. 

The image of Maddie just by the door one moment ago comes back and Clarke stands up in a second. It’s too fast and she stumbles while trying to regain her balance, but she manages to grab a gun on the ground. 

A shade appears in the middle of the smoke, Clarke shoots it. She starts to count. _One, two, three…_ one after the other, until she counts 8. She turns around, searching for the last person, this is when she sees it. The 9th body falling on the ground at Maddie’s feet. 

The girl is holding the handle of the knife, her breath is fast and her face is covered in blood.

So this... This is how it starts.

 

\---

 

Clarke only sees it when they are hiding behind old crates on the top a building, already three blocks from the attack. It's a slash on her stomach, or a hole, she isn't sure. They almost missed it beneath all the blood that is dripping and soaking her clothes. 

"This explains why it's so hard to breathe," Clarke says, with a grimace. She covers the wound again with her shirt and jacket. "We should-" when she tries to walk, it sends pangs of pain, making her grit her teeth. "Okay, let's stay here." 

Clarke grabs Maddie's arm and uses it as support as she lowers herself to the ground. Maddie is silent, her pale cheeks are covered with red blood and her attentive eyes don't leave Clarke.

"Stop looking at me like that, I'm not going to die," Clarke says after she finds a comfortable position. "Now hold it." Clarke gives her the gun. "Actually, no. Don't use it unless you need, the sound will bring attention." 

"I can use this," Maddie says, showing the knife. _That knife_. Now also covered with blood. 

"This is why-" Clarke points to the knife- "I told you to stay away from that symbol. Every time it appears..." she doesn't finish, she just closes her eyes and breathes. 

Maddie grips the handle of the knife and looks to the other end of the roof, to the door and only exit.

"Do you think they are nightbloods?" Maddie asks. 

"No, they're not," Clarke answers. 

"How can you know?" 

Clarke looks at Maddie, then to the red covering both of them. 

"You know what is the funny thing?" Clarke says instead and, without waiting for an answer, she continues, "I've spent years of my life waiting for the moment we'd find other people alive, now we finally did, and I already killed all of them." She laughs.

Then she laughs even more, until her head is too light and her body too heavy.

"It's great," Clarke says, resting her head on the wall and letting the sleep take her away. 

 

\---

 

Clarke was born in space. She grew up without feeling the sun on her skin or breathing real air. She didn't even know how was the feeling of floating in the water. Now, she opens her eyes and watches the dark sky above her. She's miles away from the stars. From that prison, and yet... 

"Due to unfortunate consequences, I'm alive." Clarke sighs and uses the wall to raise herself just enough to push the sleep away. 

Maddie, who's sitting by her side, quickly looks up and tries to hide what she was doing. Clarke wouldn't give a fuck about it if it weren't for the reaction. Even in the dark, her stare makes Maddie give up and show the piece of paper to her.

"I'm sorry," she says. Clarke looks with her forehead creased until she recognizes the drawing on the paper.

"Hey!" Clarke takes it from Maddie's hand and puts it back in her pocket, she doesn't even care about the pain caused by the blunt movement. 

"I wasn't prying," Maddie says. "I had to take off your jacket and I decided to see if you saved one of the maps. I found this instead."

"Why?" She asks, then realizes that Maddie also isn't wearing a jacket in the middle of a cold night and this makes her even angrier. "And where is your jacket?" 

"I had to use it." Maddie points to Clarke's stomach. 

Only then Clarke notices that she was cleaned and now there's a bandage made with strips of Maddie's jacket. She closes her eyes and sighs.

She takes a moment to calm down and lean again on the wall because the wound already started to throb.

"Thanks," Clarke says, looking at the night sky. "How long did I sleep?" She grabs Maddie's hand. 

Maddie takes it as an invitation to scooch closer, leaning on her side like they used to do when she was younger.

"Since the afternoon. I think we're in the middle of the night now." 

Clarke nods and wraps an arm around her warm small body.

"Anything else? Did you see anyone?"

"Not here. I heard voices and saw people walking down the street. It was still day."

“Well, at least I didn’t kill everybody.” Clarke smiles, humorless.

“You didn’t. I saw people carrying that woman Cali,” Maddie says, then grabs something on the ground. “I also found this inside your pocket.”

In the darkness, it looks like a thin brick, but when Clarke takes it she realizes it’s the piece of wood Maddie has given her. The difference is that now it has a bullet stuck on it. A cold feeling runs through her body, and she shakes her shoulders as if it could send it away.

“Are you okay to go?” Clarke asks. “We should keep moving.” She feels Maddie sitting tight. 

“You need to rest, Clarke.” 

“I’m fine.”

“I know you are lying. And you always say I should rest when I’m hurt.” 

"Because you are my precious natblida," Clarke says, brushing her thumb over the tip of Maddie’s cold nose. "I love you, you know this?"

Maddie nods.

"I love you too, Clarke. Now go back to sleep." She tries to push Clarke back to the ground, but Clarke stands up anyway. 

"No, we need at least a safer place,” Clarke says. “Actually, you stay here, I'm going to see what is happening."

"I'm going with you." Maddie follows her. 

"This is not up for debate, Maddie.” Clarke turns to her. “You know I try to hear you, but this is different, do you realize that? We are not alone, Maddie. One wrong move and we're dead." 

"I thought we were supposed to be happy we are not alone anymore."

"They literally tried to kill us."

"And now you are going to kill yourself on purpose.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You always say we need to be careful. Why are you risking your life like this?”

“So you can have a chance to live.” 

Maddie clenches her jaw. 

“And you?” She asks.

“I found you. And this is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Yes, above everything. Better than coming to Earth, better than meeting her." Clarke points to her own pocket where the drawing is inside the jacket. “Understand this, Maddie. I’m broken. I didn’t realize how broken I was until I saw you. Do you remember how it was? Because I do. You were playing in a puddle. Everybody was dead, but there you were, a little girl lost in the woods playing in a puddle, completely careless about how dirty your clothes were. You were jumping up and down and having the moment of your life."

Maddie is silent. She has her jaw clenched, but she lowers her head. 

"Now please, go back and wait for me," Clarke says. "I’ll find a way out, just let me do it.” 

Maddie nods. 

“Come back,” she asks as she goes back to hide behind the crates. 

 

\---

 

Clarke makes her way through the city jumping from building to building. It isn't the best way, but she can't risk meeting anyone. She doesn't want to kill anymore. She's tired. 

The further Clarke goes, the more she starts to see the city coming alive. Voices down the street. Lights coming through the windows here and there. Electric light, not candle light. At one point, Clarke hears a kid screaming and runs to the edge of the roof. 

She finds, hid between a few buildings, a yard turned into a playground. A bunch of kids are running around and playing with each other, climbing on some metal structures and even using an old flat door to slide. They laugh and scream, as if getting caught during a _game_ was terrifying. 

Clarke needs to lean on the concrete barrier for a moment.

This is... 

This isn't.

This isn't something she ever expected to see. 

This isn't something that her brain can even start to understand. It tells her to run, to hide, to grab Maddie and leave this place. 

She's still watching the kids play when the exit door opens. Clarke turns around ready, pointing her knife. What she doesn’t expect is to find an old woman there. She has nothing but tufts of white hair over her head and, when she walks, it looks like her small body is defying gravity.

"Do it, save me from this misery," the old woman grunts, and keeps staggering towards her. Clarke hesitates and the woman shakes her head. “Coward,” she says. "I knew it."

She stops by her side as if Clarke isn't a complete stranger still holding a knife, then the woman takes from inside her battered sweater a cigarette and lights it. 

Clarke looks back to the door, now closed, then to her. 

"Aren't you going to... warn anyone?" Clarke asks. 

The woman frowns at her and looks extra offended. 

“Do I look like I care?” 

Clarke needs to bit her lip to stop a smile. She leans on the barrier again and looks at the kids playing below. 

“What is this place?" Clarke asks.

"A city."

"Yeah, but. How did you survive?" 

"You know, girl, I've survived many things. And if it taught me something, it is not to tell secrets to people covered in blood sneaking around in the middle of the night."

"Fair enough," Clarke says, looking at herself and wondering about what she might look like to other people. Hair disheveled, tanned skin chastened by the sun, her clothes have patches and still look like garbage. Not even back on the Ark people would dare to wear something like this. The worst part is the blood, splashed everywhere. 

And yet, the woman still offers the cigarette to her like they were old friends just chilling in the middle of the night. After a moment of doubt, Clarke accepts it. 

"So you came all this way here for secrets?" The woman asks. 

Clarke looks down, taking a draw on the cigarette. One kid just fell on the ground and a man came running to help them.

"Maybe. Maybe I just want some peace," she says.

"Peace?" The woman snorts. "Girl, you were born in the wrong century. Or planet."

“I wasn’t born on Earth.” Clarke smiles, looking through the smoke to her. Now the woman is gaping. "Or any planet, to be honest."

"This..." The woman accepts her cigarette back and nods. "This is something. I heard many legends about it, you know? But this is one I have yet to hear with my own ears."

"So we can exchange some stories, then?" Clarke raises her eyebrows and the woman laughs. 

“You must be desperate if you’re trying to bribe an old woman with stories.”

Clarke pulls her shirt up and reveals the bandage already soaked with blood. The wound is throbbing like hell. Maddie did a good work with her training, but it’d need at least a few stitches and it’s already dripping down to her pants. 

“I am,” Clarke says, looking at her eyes. It's a hard look, and suddenly she's reminded of what her stormy eyes can do. 

“Alright, you’re lucky, girl. I happen to be bored to death tonight.”

"So, first... isn't it a little late for the kids to be awake?" 

The woman leans on the concrete barrier and takes a draw on the cigarette. 

"Nobody is sleeping tonight, girl. Families are mourning. We have intruders, so everybody is alert." She doesn't look at Clarke. 

Clarke presses her lips into a thin line and doesn't look at the woman either. 

"How this place... how is it possible that you survived?" Clarke asks, changing the topic. 

"Good weather," the woman says, smiling. Clarke gives her a look, so she continues, "Which is maintained by the power plant near the beach. Happy?"

"What?"

"Don't know, don't care. This is how you survive, girl. But I know that the power plant is old, from before everything went to hell. They just keep it going to protected everything around here."

"They?"

"Your people." She points at the black blood on Clarke's shirt. 

Clarke looks at her with the forehead creased. It shouldn't be a surprise, since she literally followed a nightblood map to get here, but it still is intriguing. 

"My turn," the woman says, before Clarke can ask anything else. "Do you fly?"

"What?"

"Can you fly?" The woman repeats.

"I... hm? No?" Clarke says.

"Not even in space?"

"We lived inside the space station, it had gravity. So... we didn't fly. Unless..." Clarke turns to her, grinning. "Unless your best friend was the son of the Chancellor and had access to the zero-g room."

"Now it's worth my time, tell me more."

So Clarke does it. She had completely forgotten about these days, when they were just teenagers sneaking around the hallways and messing with control panels. Wells would do anything for her back then. He always did. 

For her surprise, Clarke realizes that the memory doesn't make her sad anymore. She probably wasted all her sadness during all these miserable years. What she feels, instead, it's fondness for those days and everything they got to live together. It's an unsettling, warm feeling. 

"So..." Clarke says as she finishes. "Don't have many teenagers around here, do you?" Clarke tilts her head to indicate the playground below. Only one girl seems to be old enough and she's sitting by herself next to the wall with a book. 

"Those cockroaches? They are everywhere," the woman says with disgust. "In all my years, I've never seen worst age. They don't hear you, they think they know everything, they break your flower pots. A waste of space." 

Clarke nods, smiling to herself and thinking about all the pouts and rages she went through with Maddie.

"I don't know, though. I kind of like it," Clarke says. "They can see possibilities where we can't. They are hopeful." 

The woman dismisses it with a gesture.

"They're just not broken yet. But you don't count. You are a mother."

First, Clarke is surprised by the word. Mother. It feels wrong, it feels completely right. It was one of those unspoken things between them. Maddie had a mom, Clarke never intended to be her mom. But... still. Six years. 

Then she realizes one more thing.

"I never told you about her," Clarke says.

Clarke sees when her eyes widen, and the woman tries to look away, taking a fast draw of the cigarette even if it's almost finished. 

The pieces start to fit. This woman wasn't here by accident. Clarke looks back, to the direction of the building where she left Maddie. 

"What are you doing?" Clarke asks, grabbing the woman by the collar and pushing her against the barrier. "Where are the teenagers?"

"I'm not doing anything, girl." The woman throws her cigarettes away. "Just having a break. You were the one who started talking and shit." 

"You didn't answer my question."

"They were sent on a search party. Cali isn't happy with what you did earlier."

"Is she your leader? Tell her we don't want to fight, we just want a safe place."

"Don't we all?" The woman stares back. Now any sign of sympathy is gone. "Look at my head, are you seeing this shit?" She grabs her white turfs. "The last time I saw someone die I still had hair. These kids don't even know what death is."

The woman puffs her chest and stares into Clarke's eyes and, for the first time, Clarke thinks there was a chance the old woman could win a fight. She stares back, though.

"Do you think I'm happy with it? They attacked us," Clarke says. Technically, they didn't. But they shouldn't have tried to force them to do anything. "I just want to have peace. I think we can work this out, let me talk to Cali." 

"Cali isn't our leader. And the Commander will kill you with her own hands before you say anything."

"The..." The world starts to spin for a moment.

Commander? As in... _Commander_? Clarke knows enough that the word could mean anything, it could refer to anyone. But the part of her heart that wants it to be true takes over her brain. 

It's the old woman who steadies her.

 

"Look, I'm not happy with this either," she says, taking Clarke's reaction as fear. "Maybe you can work something out for the girl. They wouldn't do this to an innocent girl, they're not bad people. But you?" She bites her lips and shakes her head. 

"You said Commander?" Clarke still feels her hands freezing and her heart racing. 

A siren screams into the night making both of them turn their heads. 

"They found something, they'll send the guards," the woman says, grabbing Clarke's arms and pushing her forward. 

"What?"

"Go, you still have a chance to save the girl."

 

\---

 

The way back passes like a blur. All she can think is that they’ve made it. Maddie has a chance. Maddie won’t be alone. _Maddie was right_. If they find a way to survive this night. 

Clarke is gripping her gun when she stumbles back into the top of the building, barely missing the bullet that hits the wall near her shoulder.

"Clarke?" Maddie asks, coming out of the shadows holding a rifle. 

"What the-" Clarke stops talking when she sees the scene behind the girl.

Even under the moonlight, the darker shade of red is visible on the ground, the puddle of blood is still spreading around the bodies. 

"What have you done?" Clarke walks to the girl and grabs the rifle from her.

"I survived," Maddie says, staring back. "Where were you? You were out for ages."

"I didn't-"

"We need to go, Clarke."

"This was your chance!" Clarke moves away from her, looking back to the bodies on the ground. The shapes are too small for adults. Her heart feels heavy, like a stone. She knows that feeling. She remembers it. 

"What are you doing?!" Maddie asks. "They're coming, Clarke."

"You can't just kill people, Maddie. This is not right."

"They were bad people, Clarke. They tried to take me, I asked them to stop."

"It's all the same." 

Clarke takes a deep breath, it’s getting harder to ignore the throbbing pain on her stomach, and looking down, she finds that blood soaking her jacket.

"I'm sorry," she says.

"It's okay, let's go." Maddie takes her hand, but Clarke doesn't move. She looks at the girl's face, the blood dripping from her chin. Red and black blood. 

"This is my fault,” Clarke says.

"Clarke, come on." Her green eyes are pleading. 

"It doesn't matter," Clarke says. "Don't you see? Everything I do, everywhere I go..." Clarke looks at the bodies. She forces herself to look at it. "Do you know they used to call me Wanheda? This isn't in the dictionary, it means Commander of Death."

Maddie grabs her by the collar and forces Clarke to look at her.

"You promised me you wouldn't die."

"But if death is not the end?"

The door busts open and before the person even has time to fire, Clarke shoots them. It's just one. For now.

"Go, Maddie. You still may have a chance. Find the Commander-"

"No, I won't leave you to die.”

“The one time you need to go, you decide to stay.”

“I’m not staying, but neither should you. You’re not this, Clarke. You're the person who saved me from that snake. You're the one who didn't eat for days so I could have something to eat. You tell me stories and we taught me how to start a fire. Do you really think there's no way out?" 

She takes her time looking at the young girl before her. Maybe because she can’t believe that Maddie truly believes that, maybe because the adrenaline rush is finally ending. 

"I'm just so tired, Maddie. It always ends the same."

"Maybe it does, but and all the other moments?"

"You deserve someone better, someone who doesn't..."

"I want you."

They hear footsteps coming from the stairs.

"Come on, we don't need to fight anymore." Maddie offers her hand.

Clarke still hates it. 

She hates that this is a decision she has to make.

This time, though, Clarke takes her hand. 

 

\---

 

The morning is cold as ever. The first rays of the sun do little to change it. Clarke fights the sleep, holding the rifle on her lap. She doesn't feel pain anymore. She doesn't even know why, she just doesn't. She feels the cold on her bones. She feels Maddie's warm head on her shoulder. And that's it. 

She's sitting on the grass covered in dew at the top of a hill with Maddie by her side. She doesn't remember the last part of their escape clearly, just Maddie dragging her all the way there and then collapsing on the ground, exhausted, and falling asleep. 

Clarke blinks and isn't sure if she just slept or closed her eyes for a moment. The sunlight feels stronger, though. And she forces herself to sit straighter to avoid sleeping. It's hard, her head keeps falling, so she decides to do something different. She takes the drawing out of her pocket and looks at it. 

She wanted her back so badly.

Clarke doesn't like to accept it, but fuck it. 

She wishes she could go back. She wishes that she could make it real. She wishes her feet would still be strong enough to go to this new Commander and be a fool one last time. 

She wishes she could stop searching for someone who isn't in this world anymore. But she can't. 

There's always a part of her that will always come back. 

And Clarke wishes she could stop searching for it.

She sighs.

The truth is that she really doesn't want to stop.

She turns the paper and takes her pencil, supporting it awkwardly over her chest and then starts to draw. The contours of a map soon come to life. Her brain is foggy, but she remembers the printed map well enough to copy the final directions to the infinity symbol. 

Even this becomes exhausting. Her vision sometimes gets blurry and it's hard to move her cold fingers, which makes her stop to breath more than once. And as soon the sleep starts to take over, she sits straighter and continues. 

When she finally manages to finish the map and put it safely on Maddie's hand, she takes a deep breath and finally closes her eyes. 

"Do you want to hear one last story, Maddie?" she mutters, even if the girl is sleeping. 

"Her name was Lexa..."

 

\---

 

The golden of the afternoon spreads itself on the ground, reaching the pillars and making its way to the bed. It's a monumental bed, the headboard alone almost reaches the ceiling of the room, while the mattress has space enough for a few people sleeping together. And yet, a woman sleeps alone beneath the ivory furs. 

By the time she wakes up, the light of the candle takes the most of the room. She still lies down, enjoying the warmth of the bed. It's one of the few pleasures of being sick. But she isn't used to it and soon she's already up, changing to her daily clothes. 

And as she does it, the woman already prepares herself for the complaining voices saying she should get back to bed. "There's nothing to worry, you should rest."

No. 

She wasn't raised to rest.

She never learned how to do it.

So the woman rubs her eyes and ignores the pain in her bones as she goes to the window. It's the highest of the tower, with a view to the sea, the woods and the shapes of the old city on the horizon. The first stars are already in the blue sky, even during the day. But it's the ground that has her attention. 

Horses are running unsupervised near the gates and a group of guards are huddled together talking to each other. It's too distant to hear anything, the only indication of what is happening is how they move their arms aggressively as they talk until one of them walks out stomping her feet. She recognizes her as Cali.

One moment later the door opens, someone runs inside and the woman reaches for her sword just to realize she left on the chair. Ariz, her adviser, arrives next and his expression changes from annoyed to scared when he sees the woman. 

"What is happening?" She asks him, clasping her hands on her back, as if it was a casual recurrence. Only then she turns to the invader.

It's a young girl. She's cornered across the room and still leans forward ready to fight. Her hair braided black is the only distinguishable thing about her, because from the top of the head to her feet, the girl is covered in brown dirt and blood. She looks like an afraid, tiny sewer rat.

"I just need to talk to the Commander," she says with a demanding tone in an old accent. 

The woman does her best to contain her surprise. It didn't even cross her mind that this invader was an outsider. She isn't awake enough for this. 

"I'm sorry, Heda," Ariz says, walking to the girl. 

"I'm a nightblood!" The girl says, scrubbing the dirt off her forearm until the old infinity symbol appears. "Please, I found the map on the shelter. I came all the way here."

The girl is now pressed against the wall as she fights Ariz. 

"You're lucky you're alive after what you did," Ariz says to her, grabbing her arms and pulling the girl. 

"Which map?" The woman asks. 

If this girl came from home, if she managed to cross the desert lands and find her way here, there's only one map she could've used. But it doesn't make sense. The woman herself was the last one to know about the safe haven, as she was the last to use it. Nobody has made the journey in years. This girl couldn't possibly know about the power plant, she's too young for it and she certainly isn't one of her nightbloods.

"I lost the map," the girl says. "But I have this." She manages to take a piece of yellowish paper from her pocket even if the man is carrying her across the room. 

"Have you won the conclave? Do you have the spirit?" The woman asks. 

"The what?" 

"Heda, ignore her and go back to bed," Ariz says. "We have everything under control."

"Ariz," the woman says. He stops walking instantly. 

"Yes, Heda?" 

"Why Cali is here today? And who is this girl?" 

The girl uses this moment to step hard on his foot and elbow him between the legs. She quickly escapes from his reach and runs to the woman. 

The girl stops in front of her, though, as if all her courage has disappeared just by facing the woman eye to eye. 

"You are trained," the woman observes, looking down at the girl. 

"Clarke taught me," the girl says.

"Excuse me?" 

"She said she knew you." The girl offers the piece of paper.

The woman doesn't move at first. Her head started aching and her body already asks her to go back to bed. She straightens her back, instead, and takes it from her hand. 

The paper is old, not preserved like the books on her shelf. On the contrary, it's dirty, with edges ripped and wet. The type of thing that survived all kinds of hell. 

She recognizes the drawing instantly. 

"It's you, isn't it?" The girl asks. "The woman on the drawing."

The woman stops. The name is on the bit of her tongue. A name she didn't say out loud in years. Ariz is standing by the door, his sword on his hands, patiently waiting for her decision. And then the girl, the stubborn little girl with piercing green eyes that dared to invade her room, somehow sneaking past her guards, and is making demands. It's almost like someone she used to know. 

The woman smiles.

"Where is Clarke?" She asks. 

 

\---

 

_**Epilogue** _

Maddie always was the type of girl who liked to play outside, but honestly, outside was all she had. Now she has a room filled with bookshelves and three different dictionaries to read. Lexa thought her love for words was amusing at first but then jumped at the chance of reading the trigedasleng dictionary with her. 

Clarke lies down in the bed, during the morning, hearing them exchange words. It still feels like a dream. She waits for the moment that she will wake up on the cold hood of her rover. It never comes, though. Each day that passes they are still there.

Clarke watches Maddie grow and make friends. She's shy. Clarke never thought that the girl would be shy. But at the first time that they went to a reunion, Maddie stood behind her, grabbing the hem of her shirt all night. She was always anxious around people, and her cheeks easily got red.

Clarke loves her. And she loves that they were accepted in the community. It took years to get to this point, and she thinks that some of them will never be able to forgive her. She killed 11 people on that first day. After this, the names of the victims were painted on the wall where the last pieces of the car still can be found. Lexa tried to stop it, but Clarke knows that they have the right to grieve. To protest. To transform pain into action.

It's okay. Clarke knows she will have to carry it forever too. 

There is one thing she doesn’t need to carry, though. One night Clarke finally finds the courage to finally ask Lexa about it. 

“Why didn't you come back?”

They're in bed, and Lexa looks at the ceiling. She's not avoiding eye contact, no, Lexa never hid the truth from her. On the contrary, looking at the ceiling was her way to search her memories to say it as truthful as possible.

"Because I couldn't," she says, reaching a conclusion. "I could-" she looks at Clarke- "but not exactly. After what happened, Titus sent me to the safe haven. I still had one last duty as Commander. It's what happens when you lose the spirit in life. We become the bridge between the two communities, and if we can make our way here, we are allowed a second chance."

At this point, Clarke already knew it. After she healed, search for answers was the first thing she did. So Clarke learned that Becca didn't work alone when she first created ALIE and the other scientists had created this refugee. The power plant keeps an area safe from the radiation, and it helps to reverse the effects. It doesn't save the entire world, not while they don’t have more power plants like this, but it works to make a part of it, even if a tiny bit, survivable. After passing the spirit, Becca made the travel across the lands and worked with them. Another Plan B to save humanity. They decided to keep the two communities separated for protection. It was too risky with the war between grounders, so it became a secret. And a tradition: only the Commander was allowed to make the journey. 

"You could have said something, left a message, I don’t know, Lexa. Something," Clarke says. 

"Would it have changed anything?" 

Clarke presses her lips into a thin line and even in the dark Lexa can see the fire in her eyes, so she stares back, waiting, until Clarke takes a deep breath and rests her head on the pillow close to Lexa.

"It would," she says, her voice weak and lips brushing on Lexa's shoulder. 

Clarke knows it wouldn't. She would have stayed to protect her people, Lexa would have gone because it was the right thing for their people. They wouldn't have how to know if the other was alive, or if they would ever see each other again. It could even have distracted Clarke. Leaving Clarke was Lexa way to give her a chance to move on. Clarke knows what made Lexa decide to bear it alone, she would’ve done the same. 

"This is one of the things I'd have done different," Lexa says, for her surprise. "I was wrong. We’ve never moved on, did we? I wanted to reach you, but… When I realized it, I was already too far away. And I told myself, I will come back, I will tell her. Maybe someday I'll be able to send a message or Titus will tell Clarke. Or maybe she will discover about this place. If anyone can do it, it’s her." Lexa smiles and kisses the top of her head. "This is what kept me going. We’ll meet again. But then... praimfaya came, and it took everything away. There was no one to return to. I still hoped for years, but..."

"You still hoped? After years?" Clarke asks, pulling Lexa lips to her. 

"I did," Lexa says to her lips. "I didn't know why-" she kisses her lips, her chin and finds her neck- "I couldn’t take you from my mind. You started something, when we first met, and our story wasn’t over yet."

Now Clarke has made her peace with it. And she has the privilege of being in a room with everybody that she loves. Well, them and Ariz. 

It's the middle of the afternoon, and the advisor is helping Lexa and Maddie carry a bed to the next room, where Maddie will start to sleep after this day. 

The girl has been sharing the bedroom with them since they arrived because she couldn't sleep alone. Okay, during the first months it was Clarke who didn't want to leave Maddie out of her sight, even more with the death threats. But after this, the girl would wake up with nightmares and knock on the door in the middle of the night. It happened so many times that Clarke and Lexa agreed it'd be better if she stayed. 

Now the time to try again has come. 

"Anything happens, you can go back, you know this, right?" Clarke says as she follows them with a pile of books. 

"I'm just moving next door, Clarke," Maddie says, rolling her eyes. 

Lexa goes to Clarke and puts a hand on her waist, staring into her eyes with a look that says " _we talked about this_." Clarke grabs the collar of her shirt and gives a kiss on her chin that answers, " _I know_."

They are interrupted by the sound of a sword falling on the ground. 

"I'm sorry," Maddie says, clearly not sorry at all, with a grin on her lips. 

When she first met Lexa, she both adored the Commander and was jealous because of how much she stole Clarke's attention. They had to work through this until it became just an inside joke. 

Ariz isn't part of it. And at this point, he just accepted that he will never understand how these two can appear one day, creating chaos in the entire town, and win the heart of the Commander so easily. He is happy, though, because he never saw she look so peaceful. If a stubborn little girl throwing a sword to the ground is what put a smile on her face, so be it. 

"I'll see what happened with the shelves," Ariz says, walking to the door.

"I said I wanted this by today," Lexa says using her commanding tone. This time is Clarke who grabs her hand.

"It's okay, Lexa. Maddie won't mind if her books stay on the floor for a few days."

"Maddie is here and I will," Maddie says. 

Clarke turns to Lexa.

"You're spoiling her." 

Lexa tries to contain a smile. 

" _I_ am the one doing it?" Lexa raises her eyebrows. 

Ariz coughs to bring their attention back. "I'm assuming the orders are to do as Clarke says." 

Lexa sighs.

"Just bring these shelves as soon as possible," she says.

"Can I go too?" Maddie asks.

"No," Ariz says. 

"Do you think Diana will be there?" Maddie ignores him, turning to Clarke.

"Since we finished here, I think you can go and see."

Ariz rolls his eyes. Clarke doesn't know if he notices. The Ariz that they met years ago would never do it in front of his Commander, but then again, nothing is quite the same since they arrived. 

"Poor Ariz," Lexa says, while they hear his voice echoing in the hallway as he tells Maddie she will have to behave. 

Clarke waits until the voices disappear and then grabs her hand.

"How long do you think they'll stay out?" Clarke asks, and pulls Lexa out of the door and into their bedroom.

"Not long enough, I'm afraid." She waits Clarke get inside their room and closes the door, then locks it for good measure. 

When Lexa turns, she finds Clarke already sitting on the bed. 

"So can we stop talking about them?" Clarke asks. 

"What do you want to talk about?" Lexa asks.

"What do _you_ want to talk about?" Clarke repeats.

Lexa smiles, then looks to the window, to the bright blue sky outside. She thinks about a different tower, the day she saw a star cross the sky, the day she watched the ground burn. She smiles a bit more and sighs. 

"You know, Clarke... sometimes, I feel like I have an eternity of things to talk with you," she says, walking to Clarke. 

Lexa doesn't sit on her lap, no. She finds her place between Clarke's legs, she pushes her body to the bed, and Clarke follows until they are lying down in the middle of the mattress. Now Clarke has her legs wrapped around Lexa's waist, and Lexa kisses her soft lips, she makes them wet and tastes her tongue. They probably had something to talk about. Something more. But for now, silence is enough. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the kudos and comments! I hope you liked it. If there's anything you want to ask, feel free to do it. :)
> 
> ps: I suggest to read Rupi Kaur (I used her poems to start the chapters and it inspired the title of the story) because everything she writes is so good


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